The Storm
by SomewhereApart
Summary: We've all seen how the season ended. What happens next? Spoilers for 3x22.


It's like a nightmare, or maybe it's like waking up.

Robin had been too good to be true, of course he had, the smiles, the kisses, the slow and easy lovemaking they'd shared just that morning in her sitting room. It had all been a mirage, a giant cosmic joke meant to bolster Regina as high as she could go before fate slammed her back to the ground, and now she's standing here, stunned, crushed, watching Robin - _her_ Robin - with his mouth pressed to his supposed-to-be-dead wife's forehead, and there's this look on his face that she can't quite put words to, but she knows that it means they're over.

And it's all Emma Swan's fault.

Regina's newly returned heart feels dark and cold, and she's all too aware of the way it is pounding in her chest. She imagines a million and one ways she could eviscerate Emma Swan and her fumbling, slack-jawed, puppy dog face. She sees herself ripping out her red, red heart and crushing it to dust. Snapping her neck with a flick of her wrist. Immolating her in a furious ball of flames. Turning her to stone, and beating her with something heavy until she crumbles into dust. The rage is palpable, a pulsing, living thing in her veins, and she can feel the tingling buzz of magic in her fingertips already.

But she's powerless to do anything.

Henry.

If she enacts her vengeance, gives in to the rage, she'll lose the only thing she has left.

So she swallows down the anger, pulls the restless energy back into her core, and that's when the misery swamps her. Robin has buried his face in Marian's hair, and he's breathing like he's run a marathon - like he's walked through hell and gotten her back - and he has not, not once, not for a second, spared so much as a glance in Regina's direction. She remembers his beautiful, smiling face this morning when she'd told him they were destined to love each other, and the suckerpunch of pain is so vivid she almost looks around to see who struck her.

All at once, she realizes that her hands are shaking, her own breath is uneven, that there are hot tears blurring the terrible, heart-crushing vision in front of her. She blinks, and they spill, and Emma says her name with so much pity that Regina nearly reaches out and chokes her.

But instead, she runs.

She turns tail for the door and lets it slam behind her with a deafening boom, and she rushes past the spot where not five minutes ago he was kissing her, and the first unbidden sob breaks through. Regina crushes her hands against her mouth to muffle the sound and tries not to trip over her feet, tries to stay steady on knees that feel weak and useless, and she thinks that this might be the pain that finally does her in.

* * *

It's the slamming of the door - and the subsequent shattering of glass - that breaks Robin out of his reverie. His head whips to the side, his hands still clutching at Marian - _his_ Marian - he cannot believe she's here in his arms again. It's like a dream, like waking up, but he sees the faces of everyone around him, the dread and the trepidation, and he remembers that to get to Marian he'd had to walk right past - his heart stutters in his chest, his stomach dropping.

Regina.

She is conspicuously absent from this scene, and there's broken glass all over the floor and the door hangs half off its hinges.

His hands release Marian, suddenly, without thought. He needs to find Regina.

He looks to Emma, and says simply, "Watch her," doesn't even wait for her to nod her agreement before he crunches his way over the broken shards of the door and heads out into the night in search of her.

She's not hard to find, she's barely made it half a block, and he watches as her shoulders shake, and knows she's in tears, and he's the cause. She's teetering, unsteady, and he jogs until he can reach out and grab her arm, spin her toward him. Her face simply wrecks him.

She's crumpled into tears, her cheeks wet, eyes red, and when she looks at him it's with a wellspring of pain equal to - no, far surpassing - the radiant happiness she'd been emanating this afternoon (and was it only this afternoon?). He wants to say something to her, wants to wipe all the sadness away, but Marian is back, and she's real and alive and warm, and this isn't a dream, he realizes. It is a nightmare.

Because Regina is standing in front of him, a mess of pain, and all he can find to say is, "She's my wife."

"I know," Regina chokes, steadying herself with hands fisting into his shirtfront, his palms cupping her elbows.

"She's Roland's mother." It sounds horrible, how can he be saying this to her, there has to be more he can say to her, but Marian is here, and he cannot walk away, and Regina is going to pay the price for it, and it seems horribly unfair that she should look at him one hour and tell him that they're fated and then be gutted so unceremoniously the next, and even worse that he should be the one forced to weild the knife.

She tells him again, weakly, that she knows, and it's all so bleak and horrible, and Robin wants more than anything to split himself in two, and send one Robin off with Marian to live happily and raise their child, and send the other off with Regina, to spend every day making her smile, and laugh, and kissing her incredible mouth. But he cannot do that, so here he stands, grasping at her like she's about to disappear, and he supposes she is, because he cannot have her and Marian both, and it feels like being tugged apart at the joints with the wrongness of all this.

"I have to-"

"I KNOW," she bellows, interrupting him, her voice raw and ripped open, full of every unfair thing she feels, and he expects her to step away from him, but she just grips his wrist, hard, and he realizes with a jolt that underneath her pressing fingers is a tattoo that is supposed to mean he is hers, and he is leaving her, and he hates it.

It cannot end like this, he cannot leave her in this maelstrom of pain, he cannot walk away until he has found some way to calm her. So Robin just steps closer, lifts his hands into her hair and clutches, drops their foreheads together and holds her tight. _For the last time_, he realizes, and he's surprised at the misery he feels at that, considering Marian is yards away and he had wished for her for so many years. But Regina is here, and warm, and alive as well, and he feels like he's killing her, like he's putting her through hell, and all he's wanted is to be her second chance.

This is unfair.

This is cruel.

He has to walk away, but he cannot while she is in this much pain, and he cannot without kissing her one last time, and it's a traitorous thought now that he's suddenly found himself married again, but he does it anyway. He tells her he's sorry, so sorry, and crushes his mouth to hers, and pours every ounce of affection and every ounce of regret into her mouth. She kisses him back, and he tries to memorize the taste of her, the brilliant way she kisses, the smell of her skin and her hair. He tries to take all of her in, but then she sobs against his mouth and breaks away, and the devastated look she gives him makes him feel lower than the circles of hell.

And then she's simply gone, and he's left holding a cloud of purple smoke and then nothing but air.

Robin feels gutted, and raw, and for a minute all he can do is stand there and stare at the space where she'd been.

He has to go back inside, has to return to Marian, he knows. But he needs a moment.

When he'd lost his wife, he'd imagined a million ways in which some benevolent gift of fate might return her to him. In his wildest imaginings, he never dreamed it would cause such pain.


End file.
